To illustrate the difference between Web applications that don’t use MVC and those that do, think about the difference between Rocky Road and Neapolitan ice cream. Both may be delicious, but if you want to make any changes to Rocky Road, think about how much trouble it would be to switch the almonds for walnuts. The almonds are too deeply embedded in the ice cream to do the switch without affecting everything else. On the other hand, because Neapolitan is cleanly separated into layers, switching one flavor for another is an easy task. Think of Neapolitan as MVC compliant, and Rocky Road as not.

To illustrate the difference between Web applications that don’t use MVC and those that do, think about the difference between Rocky Road and Neapolitan ice cream. Both may be delicious, but if you want to make any changes to Rocky Road, think about how much trouble it would be to switch the almonds for walnuts. The almonds are too deeply embedded in the ice cream to do the switch without affecting everything else. On the other hand, because Neapolitan is cleanly separated into layers, switching one flavor for
another is an easy task. Think of Neapolitan as MVC compliant, and Rocky Road as not.
Jakarta Struts For Dummies Mike Robinson, Ellen Finkelstein
As Seth Glickman puts it, “They were almost definitely high when they wrote that.”